Another Gone
by Lucy Mars
Summary: Gone, gone, another gone. Her face was never hers to begin with. A slightly twisted RemusTonks and RemusBellatrix piece.


Title: Another Gone

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me but the quirky and dark plot.

Summary: Gone, gone, another gone. Her face was never hers to begin with. A slightly twisted Remus/Tonks and Remus/Bellatrix piece.

"How much of why you love me is because of who I am, and how much is because of who I remind you of?"

He wanted to feel surprise at her question, shock even, that she finally knew of his life and the lies that went with it. But there was nothing in him, save for a startling sensation of relief. Looking up at the little girl who wasn't so little anymore, Remus didn't know what it was he felt when he found the face of his past and the face of his present watching him with eyes as cold as Bella's scornful hate and as shattered as Nymphodora's broken heart.

"It didn't take me long to figure out why Mum would look at my real face so sadly," Tonks whispered, standing in the soft light of his doorway, "It was because I reminded her of Bellatrix. I just never thought that that was the same reason you always regarded me so fondly."

Silent under the weight of his sins, Remus regarded the face that brought him such peace and sorrow - and wondered how it was that he let the situation become so. How was it that he had managed to hurt this woman who had only ever loved him.

Pale and shaking, Tonks leaned heavily against the wall as the reality of it all fell upon her. "And to think, all these years I've loved you for loving me - the real me - when everyone else flinched from the face that I was cursed with. Never did I feel like I had to pretend to be someone else for you, Remus."

Meeting the clear blue eyes that Bella had caressed him with all those years ago and Tonks had loved him with all her life, Remus knew that all the ways that he and Bella had hurt each other all those years ago were now being inflicted upon poor innocent Tonks.

Her laughter empty and sad, Tonks closed the small distance that separated them and stopped before Remus's frozen form. "I never would have thought that you were pretending, Remus. I never would have thought that you were already pretending that I was someone else."

He had no words, no ways to express the apologizes, the denials that he wanted to scream. He knew that there was nothing to say to erase the hurt that he could taste coating her skin.

Touching the face that had once brought her such love and comfort, Tonks couldn't help but ask the question that she never wanted to know the answer to. "Did you pretend that I was her when you kissed me that first time, Remus?"

"Don't do this," Remus begged, catching her wrist and stilling her fingers gentle exploration of his worn and tired face.

Ignoring his plea, Tonks let her cold fingers rest against the dry and cracked lips that had whispered so many empty declarations of love in the late of night. "Do you catch yourself wanting to call her name when we make love, Remus? Is that why you always bite down so hard on your lip?"

His vision of the broken woman before him is distorted by his tears. Remus is not quite sure who he is crying them for. Perhaps they are for Bella and all her lost chances. Perhaps they are for himself and the two women he loves and is lost between. Perhaps they are for the figure that stands before him now - the one tainted by his mistakes.

"You were the only person who looked at my face without shadows of hate or touches of regret," Tonks whispered, "I didn't have to hide behind a different face for you, Remus. I could just be me. But that's just it, isn't it? You never saw me, did you? You always saw someone else."

"I did see you," Remus protested, his words distorted by the gentle pressure of her fingers against his lips.

"Haven't there been enough lies?" Tonks sighed with defeat, where Bella would have roared with indignation.

Raising his free hand to catch the tears that stained her own face, Remus could not suppress the heart wrenching whimper that tore through him when Tonks pulled away.

Stepping back from Remus and the intimate gesture she is not sure she can bear, Tonks found herself before a mirror and the face that was the cause of so much sadness. "When you looked at me with so much love, Remus, I truly did believe that it was because you loved me. Now...now I know better. Now I know the truth."

"I do love you!"

Moving again before he can close his arms around her and make her understand how sorry he is, Tonks glared at her lover much in the same way Bella had all those years ago. There was so much hate in the one glance that he was surprised he didn't expire on the spot.

"No, you don't love me." Tonks hissed, "You never loved Nymphodora Tonks. You loved her face and the woman that it reminded you of."

He wanted to tell her that he does love her. He wanted to tell her that he has always loved her but he cannot find the words. All he can find is regret.

Shaking her head and unsettling the black curls that Remus had awoken that very morning to find spread across his chest, Tonks settled herself heavily on the bed that she knew they would never share again. "For the rest of my life, I will never be able to look at my own face again, Remus. All it will ever do is remind me of how I feel right now - how you've made me feel. It will only remind me of the lies and deceit."

"I'm sorry," he hears himself say.

Snapping her cold blue gaze to meet his sorrowful one, Remus sees Bella in Tonks and it scares him. "Sorry for being caught in this sick game you've been playing with my heart, Remus? Or sorry that you didn't fuck me sooner?"

Not giving him a chance to respond, Tonks rose to her feet and regarded Remus with an expression of contempt and regret. "Take one last good look, Remus, because after tonight this face will never exist again. From the day I was born, I was not my mother's daughter but a child that reminded her of the sister she left behind. And today, on the day that you've killed me, I can no longer be who I am. All I have left are the faces I can conjure and the people I can pretend to be. I can never be myself again, Remus. Today, Nymphodora Tonks dies and with her, Bellatrix Black leaves you again."

He does not know how long they stand and stare at each other, he just knows that the whisper of a touch that slitters across his arm as she walks away from him compels him to move fast. Grabbing hold of her hand, Remus does not know who he is reaching for but he knows that he cannot left this unsaid. Pressing his lips against hers, Remus breathes her in one last time and whispers the declaration that throbs painfully within him. "I love you."

Shuddering against the tears that she refuses to cry, Tonks opened her eyes and found a gaze so broken and sincere that she doesn't know how she will find the strength to walk away. "Who, Remus? Who do you love?"

And it is his silence that speaks to her. It is his silence that gives her the strength to pull away and leave behind the man that might have loved her - and the face that was never her own.

The End.


End file.
